Tuesday, 15 November 2011

There were two 6mm Future War Commander games at the club this week - Gordon and Mark did a Predator raid on the Tau Institute for Crater Research. They both like to push the FWC envelope so this may explain why there were only 4 units on the table and 3 of those were in the air.

I forgot to ask how it ended but I can imagine it was very messy.

I played alongside Paul with 4000 points of Squats against Shaun & Steve with an equal number of Andrayadans. We played down the table with the object of seeing who could capture 4 built-up areas and an Ancient Alien Artefact.

Paul went for the Landtrain, a Mark III Heavy tank, a few flamethrowing motorbikes, 8 IFVs carrying infantry, mortars and robots and a couple of airships. Shaun had several massive and not so massive walkers plus infantry. They also had air support and orbital strikes but I don't think they ever came into play.

Both sides used static deployment as the command values are not too good on either side. Static deployment allows a force to set up 20cm from it's baseline. Remember that distance - 20cm.

Paul's very first order of the game was for 4 IFVs and a trike to advance. This group is able to move 25cm per command. Remember that move - 25cm

In FWC a command unit has to roll equal or under its Command value with 2 dice to get the order carried out. In this case Paul had to roll 8 but instead he rolled double 6. Double 6s are command blunders and require 2 more dice to see what the blunder is

Paul rolled 10 which is "All units under command make one full move directly towards their own table baseline".

Do you remember those two numbers? The units move 25cm and the baseline is only 20cm away.

Several hundred points of Squats disappear off the table. At this point I thought the Andrayadans would be all over us but they suffer from low Command Values so although they can usually move or fire in the Initiative phase they are limited in getting orders in.

Paul still had the Landtrain and the Mark III tank and did sterling work shooting at the Andrayadan Walkers. One got too close to my flamethrowing trikes and got fried.

At Last Orders the game was still pretty even. The Squats had inflicted more damage but the Andraydans still had their massive walkers. The Ancient Alien Artefact is still up for grabs

Please note the photos of the Squat Command Blunder are an artist's impression of what actually happened. The retreat happened too quickly for the embedded reporter to get any actual footage.

In the second game Paul H's Tawe Clan (Welsh Squats) invaded Gallifrey part of Mike S's Eldar empire. What Paul didn't know was that Mike is a member of the Stroud Alliance - a collection of sentient lifeforms from the 5 Valleys Nebula that share Not-Quite-Faster-Than-Light transport between Stroud and the Tudor Arms on club nights

Mike called on his allies - Shaun M's Andrayadans and my Pax Arcadians - to help bolster his defence which we did without hesitation.

The game consisted of a series of artillery duels and orbital bombardments mainly by the crew of the Pax Arcadian Battle Cruiser "Arlesey Town 2 Forest Green Rovers 1" with the Welsh Squats getting the worst of it.